Mexican Labor News & Analysis

ALERT: Letter from the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)

Labourstart has issued an alert prepared by the Mexico Solidarity Network. We encourage you to take a minute to send a message.


If you have the time to draft your own letter, especially if you can put it on your own letterhead, feel free to use material from the letter sent by the UE officers which appears below. Immediately below that you will find information about this conflict followed by statements from several organizations.

October 19, 2009

Felipe Calderón Hinojosa
President of Mexico
Los Pinos, Mexico

Dear President Calderón:

We are writing to you on behalf of the tens of thousands of U.S. workers who are members of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) to express our shock and outrage about your government’s actions in failing to accord legal recognition to the democratically elected president of the Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union, Martín Esparza; to send in Federal Police to occupy the Luz y Fuerza del Centro facilities; and to issue a decree liquidating the company and dismissing some 45,000 unionized workers.

These actions violate both Mexican law and the commitments assumed by Mexico before the international community, specifically conventions 87 and 98 of the International Labor Organization.

We therefore strongly urge that you immediately take the following steps:
• Revoke the decree liquidating Luz y Fuerza del Centro;
• Respect the workers’ employment and labor rights;
• Respect the Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union’s collective agreement; and
• Unconditionally recognize the SME’s democratically elected union leadership and negotiate in good faith with them for a just resolution to this dispute.

Our union and other organizations around the world will be closely monitoring your government’s actions in the coming period, and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

John H. Hovis Jr, General President
Bruce J. Klipple, General Secretary-Treasurer
Robert B. Kingsley, Director of Organization


cc: Lic. Fernando Gómez Mont, Home Secretary
Lic. Francisco Javier Lozano Alarcón, Labor Secretary
Lic. Francisco Ramírez Acuña, President of the Deputies’ Chamber Board
Lic. Carlos Navarrete Ruiz, President of the Senators’ Chamber Board
Ministro Guillermo I. Ortiz Mayagoitia, President Minister of the Supreme Court
C. Martín Esparza, SME
C. Benedicto Martínez, FAT/UNT

Email addresses where Copies Were Sent:

“Felipe Calderón Hinojosa” felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx,
“Lic Fernando Gómez Mont” secretario@segob.gob.mx,
“Lic Francisco Javier Lozano Alarcón” javierlozano@stps.gob.mx,
“Lic Francisco Ramírez Acuña” fjavier.ramirez@congreso.gob.mx,
“Lic Carlos Navarrete Ruiz” cnavarrete@senado.gob.mx,
“Ministro Guillermo I Ortiz Mayagoitia” administrator@mail.scjn.gob.mx,
“Martín Esparza SME” sinmexel@sme.org.mx,
“Benedicto Martínez FAT UNT” FAT@Laneta.apc.org

Back to October , 2009 Table of Contents

Mexican Electrical Workers Union Fights for Its Life

By Dan La Botz

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), made up of approximately 43,000 active and 22,000 retired workers in Mexico City and surrounding states, is fighting for its life. The union’s struggle has rallied allies in the labor movement and on the left in Mexico and solidarity from throughout the country and around the world.

On the night of October 10, President Calderón ordered federal police to seize the power plants, while he simultaneously liquidated the state-owned Light and Power Company, fired the entire workforce. The government also refused to accord legal recognition to the democratically elected president of the Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union, Martín Esparza, although this should have been a routine matter.

The Mexican president’s attack on the Electrical Workers Union might be compared to Ronald Reagan’s firing of more than 11,500 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) in 1981 or to Margaret Thatcher’s smashing of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1984 in which over 11,000 miners were arrested and the union defeated.

Changing the Balance of Forces

Calderón’s move to destroy this union represents an important turning point in modern Mexican labor history, a decisive step to break the back of the unions once and for all. Following up on his three-year war on the Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union (SNTMM), Calderón has now decided to take on the leading union in Mexico City. But, even more important, as one Mexican political leader noted, it is an act intended “to change the balance of forces,” so that they favor the government.

“After its electoral defeat and out of fear of social protest which the [economic] crisis is provoking, the government wants to give a demonstration of its power which everybody will understand: the left, the social movements, the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party], the unions, the Congress, the businessmen and the media. The logic is the same that was used in the [Salinas government’s] attack on La Quina [head of the Mexican Petroleum Workers Union] in 1989: if you can do it to the strongest, then you can do it to the weakest. If the most combative union can be defeated, then so can any other force.”

Mexico City, where this blow has been delivered, is heart of the political opposition to Calderón and the base of support for left-wing leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador who many believe won the last presidential election and who calls himself the “Legitimate President of Mexico.” Mexico City is also the base of Marcelo Ebrard, the mayor of the metropolis, who some see as another possible presidential contender in 2012. So this attack on the union is also an attack on the left at its strongest point.

A Turning Point

This is a turning point because it allows Mexico’s capitalist class to resume the neoliberal project of privatization begun under Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1988 but interrupted by a series of unforeseen events: the creation of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1989, the Chiapas Rebellion led by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in 1994, president Ernesto Zedillo’s precipitation of the economic crisis of 1994-96, and finally the end of the old one-party state under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its replacement by National Action Party (PAN).

Salinas had succeeded in privatizing the Mexican Telephone Company (TELMEX), the railroads, and the Cananea Copper Company, but he failed to finish the job, with the energy sector, petroleum and electric power generation still state owned. Now, after a twenty year interruption, Calderón has undertaken to finish the job.

The Origin of an Independent Union

The full significance of these events can only be appreciated when one sees them in the light of both their history and the current political context. The Calderón administration has chosen to attack one of Mexico’s oldest, most militant and most democratic union. The Mexican Electrical Workers Union was born in the great Mexican Revolution of 1910-1940. A tumultuous upheaval from below by the country’s workers, farmers and peasants, the revolution swept away the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz and replaced it with a new order, if not exactly the order that the underdogs had been hoping for. In 1911, a group of electrical workers at the Light and Power Company organized the League of Electrical Workers. Then, in 1914, they founded the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas or SME).

The newly created SME participated in the general strike of 1916 to defend the right of independent unions to exist. In 1917 the union negotiated its first contract, laying the basis for what would become one of the strongest collective bargaining agreements in the country. Less radical than some other unions and more independent than many, SME survived the labor wars of the 1920s that pitted corrupt, government-backed unions against revolutionary anarchists and Communists.

The Union in the Cárdenas Period

When the popular nationalist and leftist General Lázaro Cárdenas became president, he brought most of the Mexican labor unions into his orbit and under his influence. SME general secretary Francisco Breña Alvirez, however, guided the union along its own independent path. In June of 1936, SME faced a conflict over wages with the British-Canadian Mexican Light, which then owned the central electrical companies for which their members worked.

The Cárdenas government would have liked to avoid a strike and proposed arbitration, but the union rejected any form of arbitration and struck. The strike by the union’s 3,000 members shut off power in Mexico City—except to hospitals and other essential services—paralyzed the streetcars and brought management to the table. The union successfully defended the right to strike, eschewed arbitration, defeated the company, and maintained its independence from the government.

Between Scylla and Charybdis

During the late 1940s and 1950s, Mexico experienced its own wave of anti-Communism and its own version of McCarthyism, as the government deposed independent union leaders and replaced them with government-backed gangster leaders, the so-called charros. The SME succeeded in avoiding the worst of that era, allowing it to emerge in the 1960s and to continue in the 1970s as an ally of the “worker insurgency” then taking place and as friend to the new independent unions that were then emerging.

During the 1980s, SME once again found itself in conflict with the government-employer. In 1987, as students struck the university, the union shut off power to Mexico City as it had 50 years before. Throughout the years of the Carlos Salinas presidency (1988-1994), the union maneuvered between the Scylla of government domination and the Charybdis of the president’s program of privatization.

The Electrical Workers veered toward the privatizing president to protect its own interests, but simultaneously strove to escape the sirens of patronage. That period was not its most heroic, yet, despite its compromises with Salinas, SME did not completely forfeit its independence and emerged in the 1990s and 2000s to lead coalitions to defend national electric power companies, Light and Power and the Federal Electric Commission, and the Mexican Petroleum Company (PEMEX) from privatization.

Fighting Privatization

The union was outspoken and active in its opposition to President Vicente Fox, his National Action Party (PAN), and its rightwing agenda. SME organized around itself a coalition of other unions, peasant leagues, and urban poor people to create the National Front Against Privatization. When Felipe Calderón became president in 2006, the Electrical Workers continued their struggle against privatization, joining with the National Union of Workers (the UNT), Mexico’s independent labor federation, to build a massive national coalition dedicated to changing the direction of the country. For almost a decade the Electrical Workers and its allies have successfully stopped first Vicente Fox and then Felipe Calderón from selling off the national patrimony.

Most recently, the Electrical Workers and its Mexican Union Front (FSM), have brought together other labor unions, peasant leagues and organizations of the urban poor. The FSM in turn united with the independent National Union of Workers (UNT) to create the frentote—a gigantic coalition of virtually all of Mexico’s organized working people. The SME, thus, stood squarely in the path of President Felipe Calderón and his National Action Party.

The Union and its Contract

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union had developed over the years into a powerful institution. The union’s total members reached 43,000 working members and 22,000 retirees represented by between 700 and 840 full-time, paid delegates. The union contract, first negotiated in 1917, had evolved into a complex document describing 2,800 job categories and 92 wage scales for the various jobs. This contract protected the rights and privileges of union members, with union members having wages, benefits, and working conditions far superior to those of workers in many other unions and especially to unorganized workers.

The contract also gave the union power vis-à-vis the company in matters of financing, development and new technology. It required management to inform the union of the annual budget, building plans, investment and acquisitions, and current finances. The contract forbade the company from out-sourcing work, even in non-electrical areas such as auto shops, construction and carpentry. The union had virtual control over all hiring and firing, and the union ran a technical school with more than 1,200 students preparing to become Light and Power employees.

The union contract also required the company to provide the union with 75 million pesos (approximately 5.75 million dollars) for contracting expenses, cultural activities, for retirees, and in advances for union dues in June so that union members could buy school supplies. While critics called this the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” in was in reality a strong union contract, not so different than those found two decades ago in every industrial country in the world, providing its members with job security, economic security, and in general with social well-being.

Union Conflict Precipitates Crisis

Calderón may have been encouraged to make his bold move to eliminate both company and union by the development earlier this year of an internal union conflict. The Mexican Electrical Workers Union is a notoriously democratic union that has often seen rival factions struggle for leadership. The June 2009 union elections saw Martín Esparza, the incumbent general secretary heading up the Green Slate of the Unity and Union Democracy caucus and Alejandro Muñoz, the union’s treasurer, heading up the Orange Slate of the Union Transparency caucus. Muñoz accused Esparza of having used his union office to line his own pockets, and Esparza made similar accusations against Muñoz.

Esparza also accused Muñoz of colluding with César Nava, a PAN leader who previously served as Calderón’s closest aide (secretario particular). Muñoz denied the accusations that he was close to Nava.

Muñoz accused the union of irregularities in the electoral proceeding, but was convinced to await the results of the June election, which he lost to Esparza. A month later, Muñoz filed charges with the Federal Board of Conciliation and Arbitration. This opened the door for the government to intervene in the union. Subsequently, on September 10, Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano, declared that there had been irregularities in the election, and on October 5 he refused to recognize Martín Esparza as general secretary, effectively decapitating the union by declaring that it had no legally recognized leadership. While the process of recognizing union leaders (known as toma de nota) is a routine administrative procedure, it is used by the Mexican government to withhold recognition from union leaders. This government interference violates the International Labor Organization’s Convention 87, which says workers have the right to organize and run unions of their own choosing.

Five days after Lozano refused to recognize the union leaders, Calderón sent the police and army to seize the plants. On October 10, a group of 30 police officers seized the Systems Operation center that controls the electrical substations of the entire country. At the same time the police also took over the union hall and its radio station.

It is hard to tell if the internal conflict affected the union and its leaders, but although the union had told the press a week before that it believed the government was preparing to seize the company facilities, it did not advise its members to resist the police or attempt to hold the plants.

The Political and Labor Union Context Today

Calderón and his National Action Party, controlling the executive branch of government, have led this attack, but they have had the support of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which dominates the legislative branch. Although the government’s attack on SME has been opposed by the parties of the left -- the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the Workers Party (PT), and Convergence -- the PAN and the PRI together control more than two-thirds of the representatives and senators.

The PRI’s support has been important not only in the legislature but also in the organized labor movement. The PRI, the former ruling party of Mexico, controls the Congress of Labor, the Confederation of Mexican Workers and other confederations and industrial unions, such as the Petroleum Workers Union. So, though the Mexican Electrical Workers Union is party of the Congress of Labor, none of the other union leaders in that umbrella organization of the official labor movement have said a word in defense of the electrical workers, and none of those unions have come to is aid.

While the PRI controls most industrial unions, the head of the largest public employee unions -- Elba Esther Gordillo of the 1.5 million member Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE) and Valdemar Gutiérrez Fragoso of the 300,000 member Mexican Social Security Workers Union (SNTSS) -- have been allied with Calderón and the PAN. Gordillo joined Calderón in creating a new Alliance for Quality Education (ACE), which many critics see as opening the door for privatization in that area. Gutiérrez Fragoso, in addition to his duties as head of his union is also a PAN legislator. Neither the Teachers Union nor the Social Security Workers Union have spoken out against the government attack nor acted in solidarity with the Electrical Workers Union.

Massive Protest March

Still, the Electrical Workers Union has many allies. Labor unions, social movements, and opposition political parties organized a huge protest march on Friday, October 16 which was estimated at between 150,000 and 300,000 participants. The march began at 4:00 p.m. at the Angel of Independence on Reforma Avenue and marched to the Zócalo, Mexico’s national plaza, the last marchers arriving at 8:00 p.m. University workers, nuclear workers, miners, the teachers union opposition, telephone workers and many others marched through Mexico City to show their solidarity.

The march was an impressive show of support, and since the police seized the power plants there have been daily rallies and demonstrations by thousands of Electrical Workers in Mexico City. However, there has been no attempt to retake any of the facilities, which remain under the control of the government.

Early last week, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, convened a mass meeting of tens of thousands of his supporters and turned the platform over to Martín Esparza, general secretary of SME. Both Esparza and López Obrador called the government’s action unconstitutional and illegal and both called for resistance. Neither speaker proposed a plan of resistance through mass action aimed at the government, but rather inclined toward legal strategies. López Obrador called upon the legislature to create a commission to investigate the situation.

The mass march pressured the government into holding a negotiating session with the union, but that session soon reached an impasse. Secretary of the Interior Fernando Gómez Mont said that the government’s decision was “irreversible.” The Secretary of Labor also commented, calling the liquidation of the company a “consummated fact.” The SME also refused to compromise on its demands that the police be removed from the workplace, that the liquidation of the company be revoked, and that the government negotiate the issues with the union.

The leadership of SME says it is now calling upon others unions throughout Mexico to carry out a national strike in an attempt to force the government to revoke its recent liquidation of the Light and Power Company. At the same time the union will continue with legal and legislative attempt to overturn the government’s action. The SME itself is not in a position to strike because its members have been evicted from their workplaces and fired.

Solidarity from Mexico and Abroad

Throughout Mexico workers, students, and communities, labor unions and left parties rallied and marched to support the SME. En Cuernavaca, Moreles some 3,500 marched. In Oaxaca the Union of Workers and Employees of the Benito Juárez Autonomous University shut down the university in protest and solidarity. In San Luis Potosí the Potosí Union Front carried protested the development at the State Legislature and expressed their solidarity with the electrical workers. Diverse organizations—the National Union of General Tire Workers, the Board Popular Front (FAP), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution expressed support at the national, state and local levels.

Expressions of international solidarity arrived from the United States and Canada, from Holland, Germany, and even from workers in Iraq. Unions from around the world condemned the Mexican government and gave voice to their solidarity with the SME.

Union’s Legal and Legislative Strategy

While marching in the streets, the Electrical Workers Union is also pursuing a legal strategy, having hired Néstor de Buen, one of the country’s leading labor lawyers, to argue that the Calderón government’s seizure of the company was unconstitutional and illegal. The union also plans to have its members file individual lawsuits called amparos, a legal appeal similar to an injunction, arguing that their individual rights have been violated. While other unions have used the individual lawsuits as a mechanism to delay government actions, they would seem to be a weak tool in this case where the government has taken the initiative.

The union’s legal strategy is premised on the argument that since Light and Power was created by a legislative decree it cannot be eradicated by executive decrees. The union and its supporters have also argued that the president’s action violates both Mexican labor law and international labor standards.

The union says it will also pursue a legislative strategy, pressuring the Mexican Legislature to present a “constitutional controversy,” arguing in effect that the executive branch of the government overstepped its constitutional authority. Such a legislative strategy may be difficult, given the alliance between President Calderón’s National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which together control a large majority of both houses of congress. Nonetheless, the union has won the moral high ground, with various respected intellectuals denouncing the government’s actions.

Police, Army Still Occupy Plants

At this moment, 5,000 federal police, backed up by at least 10,000 police reserves, and 3,000 military officers still hold over 100 facilities. The plants are being operated by management and by 3,000 electrical workers brought in from the other state-owned power company, the Federal Electrical Commission (CFE), and another 800 engineers and technicians provided by the military. Accounts are also circulating of SME workers who have been dragged in by federal police to operate or repair equipment. Workers at the CFE are members of the Sole Union of Electrical Workers of Mexico (SUTERM), a union historically controlled by the PRI, whose leaders are eager to collude with the government in the hopes of sharing in the booty of jobs, union dues, and political influence.

Since the police took control of the plants there have been many localized blackouts that have shut off power for hours to Mexico City neighborhoods, to other cities and towns, and to industry, with hundreds of factories idled in the nearby State of Mexico. The government has blamed the blackouts on the union, while the union attributes the blackouts to the incompetence of the government and the workers brought in to run the plants.

Future of the Light and Power Company

The Calderón government has said that, having extinguished the Light and Power Company, it will now turn its facilities over to a new company, which it plans to merge with the Federal Electrical Commission in the near future. The government says it plans to hire 10,000 former Light and Power workers to work for the new company under new terms of employment. The 45,000 union workers have been told that they must collect their severance pay by mid-November to be eligible to be hired by the new company. So far about 1,400 workers have collected their severance pay. There have also been 11,700 payments to the 22,000 retirees. As an added inducement to workers, the Secretary of Labor has thrown in scholarships to study English for workers who file for their severance soon.

In addition, the economic pressure on workers to accept severance is great; however, acceptance of severance would limit their ability to challenge the company’s action in firing them.

The government has set aside 20 billion pesos (a little over 1.5 million dollars) for the costs of the liquidation of the company labor force. Each worker is being paid the severance to which they are entitled under Mexican law, 300,000 to 400,000 pesos or about 23,000 to 30,500 U.S. dollars each.

The Economic Argument

Felipe Calderón’s decision to liquidate the Light and Power Company did not result out of any contract negotiation or strike, but rather out of a political decision to do away with the nationalized company and the union which stands at the center of the Mexican left and in the path of the president’s privatizing agenda. The Calderón government, however, argues that this was a purely economic decision based on the economic and productive inefficiencies of Light and Power. There is, however, no clear-cut economic case to be made; the issues are complex.

The government argues that the Light and Power Company had an annual deficit of 44 billion pesos (400 million US dollars). Georgina Kessel Martínez, Secretary of Energy, asserts that Light and Power’s expenses were almost always double its sales, requiring enormous government subsidies. In reality that “deficit” was largely the result of transferring electric power from the Federal Electric Commission (CFE) to Light and Power (LyF), both government owned companies.

Calderón, in his speech to the nation, justified eliminating the company because it was “losing one third of the electricity it distributed because of theft, technical failures, corruption, or inefficiencies.” That the CFE was more productive than LyF seems beyond doubt, but many things explain that:

· Mexico City, the Federal District and Central Mexico, which Light and Power served, represent the most difficult geographic, demographic, and economic area of the country. While rural areas present special challenges, the complex and constantly expanding and evolving megalopolis of 20 million people and millions of others in surrounding central states is even more challenging.

· The residents and businesses of Mexico City reputedly “steal” electrical energy from the system through illegal connections. (Although it is a national system that exists to provide electricity to the Mexican people at a reasonable cost).

· Government agencies, for example Los Pinos, the Mexican presidential residence and office, did not pay for their electricity. For reasons that are unclear, the government company also failed to charge some Mexican businesses such as hotels for their electricity.

The union argues that for the last 20 years the government declined to invest in the company, allowing the plant and distribution system to deteriorate, in order to create an economic crisis.

The Calderón administration has suggested that at the center of Light and Power’s economic problems was the high cost of workers wages, benefits and pensions, which threatened to bankrupt the system. The government says that 160 billion pesos out of its 240 billion peso wage bill went toward pensions for 20,000 retired workers.

Without a doubt, the Mexican Electrical Workers Union had succeeded in its 95-year history in winning for its members a labor union contract that might be the envy of workers throughout the country. Unlike most Mexican workers, Light and Power workers earned about 6,000 pesos (600 US dollars) per month, something approximating a living wage. Retired workers enjoyed very generous pensions equal to or greater than their work wages. But the alleged financial crisis of the company may not have been the real motive behind Calderón’s aggressive action.

The Real Economic Motive?

Martín Esparza, the union’s leader, argues that the real economic motive for the government’s action is the desire of private industry to get its hands on the 100 kilometer network of fiber optic cable which was the property of Light and Power. The fiber optic cable system that can be used for telecommunications was licensed in 1999 to WL Comunicaciones S.A. de C.V., a Spanish company.

A year later the company, whose majority partners are two former Secretaries of Energy, Fernando Canales Clariond and Ernesto Martens, gained the right to operate the fiber optic network for 30 years, with the possibility of further extensions. Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano has also been hired as a consultant, assisting WL Comunicaciones in winning its concessions.

Mexican and foreign capital is thrilled at Calderón’s action. The Business Coordinating Council (CCE), the Confederation of Mexican Employers (COPARMEX), the Federation of Industrial Chambers (CONCAMIN), the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (CANACINTRA), and the Mexican Council of Businessmen (CMHN) all praised Calderón and encouraged him to see the attack on the electrical workers as just a first step. The Mexican capitalist class has had a taste of blood, likes it, and wants more.

Investors.com, speaking for and to international capital, in an article titled “Mexico Knocks a Union’s Lights Out” called it, “one of the best things to happen to Mexico.” Business Week, while less euphoric, speculated that Calderón might now take on the Mexican Teachers Union, PEMEX, the state oil company, and the Petroleum Workers Union, and Carlos Slim’s TELMEX with its high telephone costs.

A More Authoritarian State

Senator Rosario Ibarra, Mexico’s first woman candidate for president in 1982 and a longtime human rights activist, expressed her alarm at a whole series of recent developments—including the government’s seizure of Light and Power—which suggest that the Mexican government has become more authoritarian.

José Narro Robles, the rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), suggests that the government’s seizure of the power plants and elimination of the company and the union will aggravate an already difficult situation for the country’s majority of working and poor people. Warning of possible social unrest, he says, “Our country is living in a very delicate moment. Nobody can deny it. No one can deny it when we have such a large number of millions of Mexicans in inadequate conditions, in poverty or in extreme poverty.”

Narro fears social unrest, and his fear is understandable, but it seems that if the Mexican Electrical Workers Union and the labor movement are to survive, it will take social unrest of a well organized and massive sort to stop the Calderón government.

Back to October , 2009 Table of Contents

Chronicle of a Tormenta Electrica: "!Aqui Se Ve La Fuerza Del SME!"

By John Ross

MEXICO CITY (Oct. 28th) - Monday morning broke broodingly over Mexico City. The headlines on a score of newspapers hanging from Vicente Ramírez's kiosk were universal loas for Calderón's heroic seizure of Luz y Fuerza del Centro. As usual, La Jornada, the capital's left daily, was the exception. Political columnist Julio Hernández noted that on the eve of the centennial of the Revolution of 1910-1919, Mexico stood at a decisive moment: if Calderón was allowed to validate the takeover of the company and destroy the SME, the left's goose was cooked.

Around the counter at the Café La Blanca, sullen faces were buried in their newspapers. Isidro Zuniga talked about putting 34 years in at a box factory before being shown the door - "I gave them my youth for a handful of pinche lentils. This is how the bosses fuck us. Chinga su Madre Senor President! We will stand with the SME…"

Benito Ruiz, the driver at the hotel where I've lived for 25 years, was steaming. Calderón was like the dictator Porfirio Díaz who was dumped by the Revolution, like the president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz who had ordered the massacre of hundreds of students on the eve of the Olympics in 1968. "Watch your back, Señor John," he warned, "these bastards will stop at nothing…"

Others had less sympathy for the workers. Don Juanito López, a tailor here in the old quarter, was dismissive of Luz y Fuerza which he thought rotten to the core with corruption. When you complained about your light bill or wanted to get something fixed, employees demanded a "stimulus" bribe. Sky-high electric bills have driven a wedge between Luz y Fuerza workers and the general public.

I walked over to the neighborhood Luz y Fuerza office on Carranza Street. It was locked up tight but the Mexican flag was still flapping from the roof. Handwritten signs ("Listen up people! The SME is fighting for you!") were taped to the dusty windows. A young woman who said she was the daughter of an electricista, handed me a leaflet that explained what Calderón had done "is called fascism just like under Hitler and Mussolini and Pinochet and Diaz Ordaz."

At five in the afternoon, Felipe Calderón's arch-nemesis López Obrador had called a rally outside the Chamber of Deputies to offer legislators an alternative budget that would chop government officials' salaries in half, cancel their million pesos perks, and double the tax rate on Mexico's 400 top corporations that now pay only 1.7% of their total earnings. Three years after the stolen election, AMLO is still able to drum out thousands but lately attendance has dipped and the die-hards' energies dampened.

Today, however, the crowd outside Congress was swollen by word of the takeover - for AMLO, the SME would be a force multiplier. Several thousand electricistas packed the street, chanting and pumping their fists into the dank afternoon air: "Aqui se ve la Fuerza del SME!" ("Here you see the strength of the SME!")

Andrés Manuel helped Martín Esparza mount the podium and embraced him. He would put his movement at the SME's disposal. The opposition would consolidate for a "mega-marcha" on Thursday the 15th. "!Aqui se ve la Fuerza del SME!"

Esparza took the mic. He is not a brilliant speaker but he made some pertinent points, rattling off the names of companies and institutions that were exempted from paying their electric bills: the Torre Mayor, the nation's tallest skyscraper; luxury tourist hotels in the Zona Rosa and the ritzy Polanco district; "Reforma" and "Uno Mas Uno", newspapers that back Calderón to the hilt; the Chamber of Deputies and Mexico City's City Hall; Eight distinct federal Secretariats and Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. Electricity rates were high because 70% of the juice is sold to 46,000 private corporations at 45 centavos the kilowatt while home consumers shell out one peso 50 centavos. Esparza's fist shot up. "!Aqui Se Ve La Fuerza del SME!" When he drove away from the rally, the union leader was shadowed by seven carloads of federal police.

Out at Los Pinos, the Estado Mayor, Calderón's elite military guard, was installing even more forbidding metal fences around the presidential palace and shutting down all access streets. Los Pinos has always been a bunker but now it was impenetrable. The President has declared "a state of exception" Mayor Marcelo, a prominent figure in López Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution, worried. "We have returned to the 19th century of Porfirio Díaz. I have never seen such disrespect for the workers."

Tuesday, October 13th: It rained hard all Monday night, a cold late season downpour that always spells trouble for the city's circuits. Most of Luz y Fuerza's transformers are at least 50 years old - the company has been starved for investments for decades - and the Federal Electricity Commission engineers who had been brought over to operate the plants had no idea of how to deal with such antique equipment. Blackouts spread into 22 colonias - the prensa vendida suggested sabotage.

Federal Police visited the neighborhoods where SME workers live. One electricista, as reported in La Jornada, says he was offered 25,000 pesos to return to the plant he had been forced out of in the Saturday Night Massacre. He turned down the bribe. Many SME members have climbed into the lower middle class. They have an apartment and a car and payments to make every week. Now they had no work and no paycheck yet they wern't going to give up their union without a fight. "!Aqui Se Ve la Fuerza del SME!"

Weds. October 14th: By Wednesday morning, the blackouts had radiated into 72 colonias in 12 out of the city's 16 delegations (boroughs.) 90,000 residents in Milpa Alta, a rural delegation, hadn't had power since Saturday night. The system was said to be on the verge of collapse. When irate customers called Luz y Fuerza, no one answered the phones.

A hundred families in Ocoyouapac, Mexico state on the western flank of the capital had enough. They marched out to the busy federal highway that connects up Toluca with Mexico City at morning rush hour and stood there with their arms folded across their chests, the women holding squirming babies, neighborhood dogs lay at their feet. Auto horns blared. Traffic was backed up for 18 kilometers. The Federal police arrived and threatened arrest. The colonos stood there for two hours and refused to yield until the juice was turned back on. The colonos were not alone. 754 manufacturing businesses in Mexico state had to close shop because of the rolling blackouts. Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, the PRI presidential candidate in 2012, told the prensa vendida that he had proof of SME sabotage.

The Calderón government opened up indemnization pay-out centers on Wednesday morning with terrific fanfare - four pages printed in green ink ran in every newspaper instructing workers where to sign up for their checks. The pay-outs would be conducted under the aegis of the SAE or System for the Liquidation of Embargoed Goods, an agency that is usually charged with auctioning off property seized from narco traffickers. Gomez Montt warned that the if the union tried to intimate workers into refusing the checks, its leaders would be met with the full force of the law.

Despite the offer of spectacular bonuses for those who signed up to be liquidated before the end of the month, the lines were thin outside the centers, mostly administrative personnel who were not even members of the SME, some older workers on the verge of retirement plus a few ex-wives who showed up to see if husbands who owed them child support and food allotments had cashed out. Others lined up just to find out exactly how much they would receive. Carstens had promised that the government would counsel former workers where to invest their windfalls and provide them with incentives for business start-ups.

Those who were inclined to buy the government package waited from 9 AM through mid-afternoon and gave up. The computers had crashed and the system was down. A few lucky sell-outs received checks only to discover they were post-dated and needed to be approved by arbitration and conciliation commissions before they could spend them. "Esquiroles!" SME militants yelled at them despite Gómez Montt's warning, "Scabs!" "What will you do when the money runs out?" one veteran worker called out. "Calderón has created 60,000 quesadilla venders - there won't be enough tortillas to go around…"

That morning, Felipe Calderón addressed a convention of radio and television executives whose networks had been spouting his government's calumnies against the SME for weeks. The event had been moved up a day so that the president wouldn't get caught up in Thursday's mega-march. Calderón's conscience was still clear, he told the execs. He was fighting for Mexico's poor, the victims of his own neo-liberal regime. When he had done, the executives gave him a ten-minute standing ovation. I punched off the TV. The prolonged applause of the owners of the prensa vendida brought back bitter memories of the standing ovation the Mexican congress had given Gustavo Díaz Ordaz after he slaughtered hundreds of students 41 years ago at Tlatelolco. Such servility and authoritarianism are old stories around here.

Thurs. October 15th: I awoke to the racket of Federal Police helicopters buzzing the Centro Historico like giant gnats. Ever since 1968 when Díaz Ordaz's helicopters dropped flairs to signal the start of the student massacre in the Plaza of Three Cultures, the government has deployed these infernal machines to intimate those who stand against it. I stood on my balcony and waved my fist at the intruders. "!Aqui Se Ve La Fuerza del SME!"

When I went out for breakfast, it felt like the Centro had been emptied out in preparation for the big march. The banks had not even bothered to open. In the Zócalo, the big tents housing the annual book fair had been dismantled and the books carted off to avoid conflict with the marchers. Mayor Marcelo likes to fill the great square with public spectacles, a skating rink in the winter, an exhibition of dinosaur bones all summer. The mega-march would be an occasion to reclaim this public space to demonstrate the pueblo's enormous displeasure with the mal gobierno ("bad government.")

By lunchtime, you could hear the rolling steel curtains that protect storefronts in the Centro being slammed shut. There were not nearly as many Mexico City cops in the streets as there had been for the October 2nd commemoration of the '68 massacre when students tend to maraud. SME workers are not apt to spray paint nasty slogans on the KFCs or plunder 7-11s.

I joined a gang of cultural workers in front of Bellas Artes, the rococo fine arts palace just outside the Centro Historico, captained by Paco Taibo II, the quintessential Mexico City novelist and historian, and Enrique González Rojo, a revolutionary poet who is even more ancient than this correspondent. For two hours we stood there behind our banner as an endless river of protestors streamed by, waiting for a space to insert ourselves in the line of march.

The demonstration was clearly the densest since the protests after López Obrador had been robbed of the 2006 election but it was distinct from AMLO's recent "informative assemblies" that have become stagy and ritualistic. October 15th was indeed a spontaneous response not only to Calderón's grotesque union busting but also a long painful laundry list of his government's abuse of social movements in this conflictive city and country.

The spontaneity was made manifest by the thousands and thousands of hand-scrawled signs the marchers waved calling "Fecal" every name in the book of imprecations from dog to snake to rat to asshole to the reincarnation of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and the dictator Porfirio Díaz. "Feed The Poor!" one sign counseled, advising that Augusto Carstens' corpulent frame should be rendered into "carnitas" (roast pork.) "If there is no solution, there will be a revolution!" UNAM students bellowed.

The fists punched at the autumn air: "!Aqui Se Ve La Fuerza del SME!" A baby stroller drifted by with a sleeping child aboard, her little fingers curled around a sign that asked "Mommy, why has my daddy lost his job?" Many marchers called upon rate-payers to withhold their payments. Others hollered for a "Huelga General", a general strike. "1810-1910-2010! The revolution will come again!"

From 4 PM through 9:20 that night on my cheap chronometer, the masses poured into the Zócalo. Police estimated the crowd size at 150,000, the organizers 350,000. As a veteran Zocolologist who has been estimating the size of crowds here for a quarter of a century, I'll go with a quarter of a million.

By 6 PM, the floor of the great plaza was jam-packed and many contingents had not yet even decamped from the starting point at the Angel five kilometers down Reforma. López Obrador and his thousands of brigadistas who had volunteered to bring up the rear of the mega-march did not even reach the Zócalo before the masses inside that Tiennemen-sized square intoned the National Hymn which is how such rallies wind down around here.

Despite its enormity, Mexico's largest, longest social outburst in years didn't even got top billing in the prensa vendida - Televisa led the nightly news with a story about a kid who was thought to have flown off in a runaway balloon somewhere in Gringolandia. But in a symbolic nod to the strength of the SME, Gómez Montt announced that a "dialogue" would soon be entabled between the mal gobierno and the union. Mayor Marcelo volunteered to mediate.

I joined my friend Berta Robledo, one of AMLO's "Adelitas", at the Blanca for coffee. We sat at the counter with five very serious farmers from Zacatecas. They all owned cows but they couldn't get a price for their milk anymore so they had taken to dumping it out on the highway. The banks were threatening to foreclose. Sure, they supported the SME but they had really traveled 500 miles to manifest their desperation at the worsening conditions of their lives. "Our fathers and grandfathers fought and died for this land," Don Geronimo Amaya muttered, "we don’t want to see more blood spilled. But if we have to…." His small voice trailed off into the café chatter.

Such is the mood of "los de abajo" on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Mexican revolution.

To be continued.

About the Author

John Ross's monstrous "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City" will be published by Nation Books in November. You can get an earful at Northtown Books in Arcata Calif on Friday the 13th and at Modern Times in San Francisco's Mish on the 18th. During his upcoming "Ross & Revolution In 2010" book tour, the author will also be traveling with his recently-published "Iraqigirl" (Haymarket), the diary of a teenager coming of age under U.S. occupation. Any bright ideas about venues? Write johnross@igc.org

Back to October , 2009 Table of Contents

Solidarity Statements

Many unions have begun issuing statements in support of SME. We have included several here. For those of you who read Spanish, an additional statement issued by trade unionists from Germany, Holland, the US and Canada who were participating in a conference last week in Mexico City.

AFL-CIO Statement

Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on the Mexican Government's Recent Decision to Liquidate the Central Light and Power Company and Effectively Eliminate the Mexican Electrical Workers Union

October 15, 2009

Earlier this week, the government of President Felipe Calderón announced the liquidation of the Central Light and Power Company of Mexico (Luz y Fuerza), including a summary firing of 44,000 workers following the occupation of the power plants by the Mexican Federal Police.

This unilateral action by the Mexican Government creates the conditions for eliminating Luz y Fuerza, and the possibility of merging the Company’s facilities and assets with the Federal Electrical Commission for the purpose of selling the entire package to a private corporation. It also eliminates the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), which has been a leading democratic force in the country opposing President Calderón’s economic policies and the government’s plans to privatize the electrical industry.

On behalf of over 11 million working women and men of the United States, the AFL-CIO condemns this unilateral action by the Mexican authorities which effectively destroys the SME and the trade union rights of the Luz y Fuerza workers. Regrettably, the Mexican Government has employed similar acts of intervention and repression against the Mexican Miners and Metalworkers Union.

The AFL-CIO supports the following demands of the SME and of the Luz y Fuerza workers to reverse this egregious act of union-busting and violation of internationally recognized standards of freedom of association and collective bargaining: 1) a revocation of the government decree unilaterally liquidating the Company; 2) an end to the
occupation of the power plants by the Federal Police; 3) the implementation of good-faith negotiations between the Mexican Government and the Union on the relevant financial and administrative issues.

And the AFL-CIO continues to stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers of the Mexican Miners and Metalworkers, supporting their just demands for recognition and restoration of their democratically-elected leadership, including General Secretary Napoleon Gómez Urrútia, and an immediate end to governmental repression of their Union.

Contact: (202) 637-5018

Link to AFL-CIO website containing STATEMENT

United Steel Workers (USW) Statement

PITTSBURGH – (October 14) The United Steelworkers (USW) today sharply criticized the actions of the government of President Felipe Calderón for his announcing the liquidation of the Central Light and Power Company of Mexico (LyF) and the termination of the workers following the seizure of plants by the Mexican Federal Police. By terminating the workers, the government seeks to eliminate the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), a frequent critic of Calderón's government policies.

SME has criticized the government's plan to privatize the electrical industry. It appears that by seizing LyF, which provides electricity to Mexico City and several states in central Mexico, the government is planning to merge its facilities with the Federal Electrical Commission and sell the facilities to a private corporation.

"The actions of the Mexican government in using Federal forces to take over the public utility, dismissing the workers and thereby effectively disbanding their union is an outrageous act of union busting," said USW International President Leo W. Gerard. "It is similar to actions taken against the Miners Union and provides further evidence of the government's anti-worker, anti-union agenda and its scorched earth policy against democratic and independent unions."

While the Calderón government moved to suddenly seize the plants, its actions were no surprise. The administration has previously utilized police and military force in launching attacks on labor unions such as the Mexican Miners and Metalworkers Union.

Additionally, Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano declared in September that the Mexican Electrical Workers Union elections were invalid and that general secretary Martín Esparza and other union officers would not be recognized by the government. Without legally recognized union officials, the union could not engage in contract negotiations or other activities.

The union is currently demanding the revocation of the government decree liquidating the company; the immediate evacuation of the Federal Police from the plants; and discussions between the government and the union about financial and administrative issues. The last item is to address government claims that its actions are justified because the Light and Power Company was both inefficient and exorbitantly expensive. If it was truly inefficient, the government should have fired the managers they appointed, Gerard said.

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union has called upon Mexican unions and unions of other countries to rally to their support. "We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in these unions and call upon the government to reverse this decision and uphold the internationally recognized rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining," said Gerard.

CONTACT: Jerry Fernandez of United Steelworkers (USW), 412-562-2611

Federation of Iraqi Workers (FWCUI) in Solidarity with SME

FWCUI Solidarity with the Mexican Electricians’ Union

We, members of Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) strongly oppose the liquidation of the public electricity company Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC) and its trade union, the Mexican Electricians’ Union (SME), an organization which has existed for nearly a century and which has stood out for its firm opposition to plans to privatise the public industries, and is an example of struggle to millions of workers in the country.

The decree which liquidates LyFC, promoted by the Calderón administration, is one more in a series of measures to make the workers pay for the economic crisis of the capitalists; whether it be by raising taxes, reducing social expenditure (health, education housing, etc.) or closing down public enterprises.

But just as the bourgeoisie is determined to place the burden of the crisis onto the shoulders of the workers, the working class is ready to launch a struggle to stop this. Three days after the decree of liquidation of LyFC, there have been demonstrations in support of the SME in seven Mexican states (even though in four of these the LyFC company does not provide any service). The PRD (opposition party) has joined the calls for mobilization and the UNT trade union, which brings together other sectors as telephone workers, has expressed itself in favour of a nationwide strike.

The rank and file of the union are aware of the fact that to struggle is the only way. This conclusion is connecting with the mood of anger and discontent that exists throughout the country. The attack on the SME is bringing together the different sections that have been struggling since 2006 but were isolated.

The way the Felipe Calderón government has proceded has shown the flexibility of bourgeois legality, which resorts to any flimsy excuse to defend their capitalist interests. The state has set in motion all the means at its disposal against the union, but we know that we have the international solidarity of the working class to develop this struggle further.

We, workers of Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) support the struggle of the SME and we oppose the closure of LyFC. We are not prepared to allow the rights of the working class to continue to be trampled on.
Given all these abuses by the employers and at the same time the heroic struggle being pursued by these colleagues, the undersigned declare:

1 .- The workers of the Mexican Electricians’ Union are not alone. Their struggle against the attacks of the bourgeoisie is the struggle of all workers in the world. And this we will demonstrate.

2 .- We demand that the government of Felipe Calderón reverses immediately and unconditionally the decree of liquidation of the Luz y Fuerza del Centro company.

3 .- We are in favour of a 24-hour general strike called by the leadership of the UNT, PRD and CND, as a viable and necessary method of struggle to stop this attack.

4 .- We express our determination to take all kind of actions to show solidarity with our fellow EMS workers and strengthen their struggle.

For the unity of the working class to defend their rights!

The Strength of the Labor Movement Lies on Its Unity and Organization...
Long live International Workers' Solidarity...

Sincerely,
With regards:
Akram Nadir (Union Organizer in Iraq and Kurdistan)
International Representative of Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI)
Tel:+1-778-318-6981
E-mail:akram_nadir_1999@yahoo.com
www.fwcui.org

Resolution by the National Lawyers Guild

RESOLUTION BY THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD CONDEMNING THE TAKE-OVER BY THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT OF THE FACIILITIES OF THE COMPANIA DE LUZ Y FUERZA DEL CENTRO AND THE ATTACKS ON THE MEXICAN ELECTRICAL WORKERS (SME), ITS MEMBERS AND THEIR FAMILIES

WHEREAS, the Mexican Electrical Workers (SME) has represented workers in Mexico for decades and has a proud history as a democratic union, active in defense of the rights of its members;

WHEREAS, last week the Mexican labor authorities refused to recognize Martin Esparza, the legally elected president of the Mexican Electrical Workers (SME), refusing what under Mexican law should be a routine matter to “take note (toma de nota)” of his election;

WHEREAS, this illegal intervention into the internal affairs of the union violates not only Mexican law, but also the commitments assumed by Mexico before the international community, specifically convention 87 of the International Labor Organization. Moreover, this action by the government had the consequence of seriously limiting the legal capacity of the union to defend its members, including by freezing the unions assets;

WHEREAS, on October 10TH the government of Mexico, using the federal police,
seized physical control of the work places of the Compania de Luz y Fuerza del Centro, firing approximately 50,000 members. Subsequently, some workers were forced to return to their workplaces, some kidnapped or dragged by the police, due to the absence of workers with sufficient knowledge to operate the equipment;

WHEREAS, this takeover occurred in the absence of any legal authority or even prior written notice, and the discharge of workers from their workplaces by force and with no previous notice violates their human rights in that Mexican labor law requires a legal procedure prior to any closure of a place of work and that in the case of a change of employer that the labor rights of the workers must be respected;

WHEREAS, the National Lawyers Guild is gravely concerned both about the illegality of the actions taken by the Mexican government and that the discharge of these workers and
termination of their wages have left some 50,000 families without any means of subsistence, and may force them to relinquish their legal rights to challenge the government's actions because of economic necessity.

THEREFOR BE IT RESOLVED that the National Lawyers Guild strongly condemns the take-over by the Mexican government of the facilities of the Compania de Luz y Fuerza del Centro and its attacks on the Mexican Electrical Workers (SME), its members and their families and calls upon the government to revoke its decree unilaterally liquidating the company, end the occupation by the police, and begin negotiations in good faith with the SME on any relevant issues.

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